Would you struggle to save if your earned $190,000 a year?

Hi Candice again, I was recently trolling through articles in the financial section on news.com.au and an article caught my attention.   ‘Saving is not something I’m good at’: Meet the guy who spends $1500 a week at restaurants.  

Steve Molloy is a successful business owner, is married with a young child and spends money “like it’s going out of fashion” because he prefers to live his life rather than save for the future.

I get this.  I go between struggling to pay our bills to "life is too short, buy the shoes!".  

Many of us would LOVE to have an income of $190,000 a year, we would have the freedom  to save, enjoy the finer things in life AND not have to struggle each and every week.

While reading the article, I began to wonder, if my financial circumstances changed, would my behaviour?  Or am I that used to eating at home and running around turning the lights off after my kids, that I would continue to do it?  

I kept reading...

Mr Molloy said in the article “I’ve got a Netflix account which started out at $8 and is now $17 a month, also a YouTube Red account, Foxtel, Stan, Spotify and all that. What’s worse is they bump up the price, you get an email you don’t read, and suddenly you’re paying a little more than you first signed up for."

We have Netflix, and we had Stan.  I read the email that prices were going up.  We took a vote (actually, my husband and I took a vote, the kids didn't get a say) and Stan was cancelled.  It may have only gone up a little bit, but when you budget down to $2, that little bit is A LOT at the end of the month.    

His brother on the other hand  is a chartered accountant who counts every cent. “He has an Excel spreadsheet with all of his finances and every single month he’ll try to reduce it down,” he said.

“Even if it’s chewing gum, he’ll write down the cost and add it up. He had been at a company 14 years and had annual leave saved up. When he took the annual leave he stayed home and didn’t spend any money, just to maximise [the value]. He’s sort of on one extreme.”

I think I am somewhere between Steve and his brother, I do not spend my annual leave at home, bring on our yearly trip to Noosa, I don't have an excel spreadsheet (I used to) I have DCA Lifestyle Package. 

I don't have to write down when I buy a pack of chewing gum or even work out how much our house is worth, the Package does it for me.  The Financial Planner that comes with the Package helps work out how I can have the finer things in life, while still putting money in the bank for a rainy day.

If I did have an income like Steve, I would still use my Lifestyle Package, I would still chase my kids around the house turning lights off after them and I would still enjoy home cooked meals.  The money would reduce the stress of how to pay the next bill and allow us to have Stan AND Netflix (I can hear my kids rejoicing) but I would still need the advice on how to best manage it.  

If you would like a life somewhere between Steve and his brother, contact us.

Useful links

Lifestyle Package - Services included

Tax Planning - Lifestyle Package

This article is provided as general information only and does not consider your client’s specific situation, objectives or needs. It does not represent accounting advice upon which any person may act. Implementation and suitability requires a detailed analysis of a client's specific circumstances.

Would you give employees ‘wedding leave’?

By Marketing Coordinator - Candice Dolley

This is hardly an Accounting, Business Advisory or Financial Planning topic, it is interesting all the same.

Would you give employees wedding leave?  Some countries allow marriage leave.  In France, for instance, employees are entitled to a minimum of four days paid ‘marriage leave’ when they get married. Over the border in Spain, that entitlement more than triples to 15 days’ paid leave.

I got married just shy of three years ago. I never even thought about hitting up my employer  for "wedding leave".  I simply put it through as annual leave.  

Before you start thinking this is going to become a "thing" it isn't.  “Under the Fair Work Act, there is no obligation to pay employees when they are off work to attend such events. Most employers would ask their employees to take these days as annual leave. Some might allow staff to take unpaid time off, but that would be up to the employer,” 

Just like I did for my wedding.  However, when I continued reading through the article (you can read the article here), other countries allow paid leave for weddings, religious holidays, school sport days, kids birthdays etc, arguing it increased productivity and reduces absenteeism.  

Wedding leave, in my opinion, should be taken as Annual leave (please note, this is my personal opinion). Leave or the flexibility to attend children's events, I like this idea (I have three children).

Trying to balance work and life  is hard.  I have been lucky in the businesses I have worked for.  I have had the flexibility to attend sports days (or similar days).  It makes it easier when you live in a smaller town and it takes 15 minutes to drive to your kids events.  You can pretty much use lunch breaks to watch events.  However, if I have missed an event it has been due to meetings I could not change.

But if I lived in Sydney or Melbourne where I had to travel an hour to and from work each day, I would not have the ability to just "duck out" to watch my child run laps of the oval.  Having the flexibility to use my leave or have additional leave per year, to watch my child participate in an event would be ideal.  

Some of my greatest memories as a child was having Mum on the sideline as I played my sporting/musical events.  As my sister and I grew older, she returned to work and couldn't attend as many of our events, I still found myself looking for her in the crowd.  

This article got me pondering, should leave for children be incorporated into the leave system?  Or is it discrimination for those who do not have children?  So many questions from reading one article.

Let me know your thoughts below